Let’s talk about Green Computing

As research becomes increasingly data- and compute-intensive, the environmental impact of our activities has to be taken into account. Every computation activity, in my case, processing large datasets and running climate and weather models, consumes energy and contributes to carbon emissions. Forecasting the weather, understanding climate change, or analysing environmental data all provide crucial knowledge that helps us respond to global challenges. At the same time, it is equally important to acknowledge their cost and to ensure we are using our computational resources as efficiently as possible. This talk invites research software engineers and researchers to join a conversation about sustainability in computational research. We’ll explore what green computing means in practice, how different initiatives and tools can help quantify and reduce the digital footprint of research, and how these ideas can be adapted within our own institutions and infrastructures. Drawing on experiences from open-source and research software communities, I’ll discuss practical steps we can take, both individually and collectively, to make our work more efficient, transparent, and environmentally responsible. Together, we can build a culture of sustainable research software where innovation and efficiency go hand in hand.ABOUT THE AUTHORPaola Corrales has a PhD in Atmospheric Science from the University of Buenos Aires. During her PhD, Paola applied data assimilation techniques to improve the representation of mesoscale convective systems and associated precipitation. In particular, her research focused on data assimilation of conventional observations and radiances from polar and geostationary satellites. She has experience working with Numerical Weather Prediction models and developing software using R and Fortran. She is also part of R-Ladies, rOpenSci and The Carpentries and is interested in open source, open science and reproducibility. She recently joined the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Weather of the 21st Century as part of the Research Software Engineer Team in Australia, where she supports researchers studying what the weather will look like as our planet keeps warming up. -----For more information about the eResearch NZ / eRangahau Aotearoa conference, visit: https://eresearchnz.co.nz/